


Tether

by Greyias



Series: The Serpent's Den [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fractured Alliances, Introspection, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, future storyline speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13933710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greyias/pseuds/Greyias
Summary: Set Post-Copero. When she meditates now, she's not looking for peace. She's looking for him.





	Tether

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to an anonymous question: How will Grey react to having to go back to Nathema ?

When she was a student, she would meditate up to five, sometimes even more, times a day. The Order encouraged its young students to try and reach a deep meditative state as often as possible in order to connect and explore their own connection to the Force. Many of her earliest days had been spent in contemplation, as there was little else for a young Jedi-in-training to do for long stretches of time on a starship. By the time she had entered her first Enclave at age sixteen, she could easily slip into a deep trance where the Force would seemingly pour through her fingertips and down to her toes, flowing in and out on each inhale and exhale until she was unable to tell where she began and it ended.

It had been easy as breathing.

Had.

Since Grey had returned from Umbara, it had taken the reappearance of her old mentor to quell her wild thrashing thoughts, to ground her from the emotions that threatened to unravel a lifetime of very practiced, measured calm.  Most nights she went through the complex series of Alchaka exercises until she was too exhausted to stand, too exhausted to think. It was a Matukai variant of Jedi meditation, but not commonly taught on Tython — most students there had a deep connection to the Force that didn’t require those special techniques to bring out. But it had been one of  _his_  favorite ways to unwind when his busy mind wouldn’t let him sleep. He would keep moving until he was too exhausted and would collapse into an uneasy rest that she was never able to completely calm.

The thought of Theron still stings, like an open wound rubbed raw. It never closes, it can’t—she won’t let it. Every night she repeats the movements of the shadows she would watch in the dim lighting, the rhythmic motions soothing in their own way. Every morning she wakes, pulling on her new attire adorned with  _his_  colors before she sits and tries to find that deep, quiet center that used to be so easy to touch but now is so far out of reach. Probably because more often than not, she’s not looking for her center.

She’s looking for him.

The warm spot in the back of her mind that used to burn so bright is dim now — with distance and uncertainty, but despite that there’s still a trail. After a long night, she’ll find that muted thread, like a footpath leading through the vast array of colors that’s the wider universe, that’s the rest of the Force, and she'll trace it as far as it can go. More often than not she’s interrupted by something in the here and now, jerking her from that far off place wherever he is. This futile effort does nothing to calm her mind, does nothing to give her rest and respite — it seems to only heighten this constant exhausting state of anxiety and anger and anguish. There are no answers found in reaching out across the vast void between them, that’s not how things work, but each morning she tries again — just in case it this time it  _might_.

She had gotten close one time, shortly after receiving the transmission that Hylo had intercepted she had deliberately headed to her (almost) secret meditation spot where she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed. The scent of him had long since faded from their bedsheets, his echo in the Force dulled by the chaotic emotions she had flung about on her return to their shared quarters. Her meditative spot had been untouched though — and the Force still sung with the connection they had shared there. With the renewed hope, the slightest tangible evidence that the desperate faith she clung to was not in vain, she had reached out to him again. Across lightyears and the stars themselves she searched, until she found its source.

Often when on missions he would close himself off, the bright connection they shared still present, but his feelings and mind shuttered as he focused on the here and now. She had never pried, they had always had their boundaries and a trust built on respecting them. The curious absence was present here, the void where the warmth that Theron should be was practically a beacon in itself. The “here” was just as nebulous, the true location lost in the vast distance. The Force was not a homing beacon and couldn’t be used as such. But she could touch the edges of his mind, feel the presence of everything around him. 

Danger practically pulsed with his every move, as if he were wading through pure malevolence. It made her want to grab at that bright point she knew was hidden behind that veil and bring it back with her. But before she could do anything she was shoved away, mind spiraling back until she found herself staring back at the mountain vistas on Odessen. Unsure if the breaking of the connection was her failings yet again, or if the fault lay at the far end of the galaxy.

Since then, she hadn’t gotten quite as close, but not through lack of trying. Her faith renewed, she would tug on that little tether in the back of her mind, as if to test that he was still there. Still alive. Still waiting for her to find him. Waiting for her to bring him back from the dark place he had ventured into, likely on her and the Alliance’s behalf.

_I would do anything to protect you._

His earnest promise rings bittersweet now, the true weight of it only beginning to show as each layer of this mystery peels back.

She now sits cross-legged in the center of their quarters, wearing his colors as if waving a flag of commitment. She doesn’t see them when she closes her eyes, but their significance still lends weight to her as she starts down her now familiar path. The colors flying by are different, bright and wild until suddenly everything around her grows gray, until there’s almost nothing at all, just the dim tether that is her connection to the man she loves. She shouldn’t hold on tighter, but she does, the rush of uncertainty nearly pulling her from the meditative trance. 

It takes a moment, then two, as she grasps to the precious light, before she ventures further on, the Force fading further with each step. She has to shove the apprehension away, the cold feeling of anxiety that threatens to overtake her, so she can try and find the person waiting for her at the end of this rope. The void closes in the further she goes, nothingness threatening to pull everything that she is away, but she can’t stop, nor can she let go. The darkness and danger that had pulsed around him before had set her heart racing, but this is pure oblivion pressing in from all sides makes it clench with nothing short of terror. It is like her psyche being scattered again —  every bit of her shattered as she’s nearly hollowed out from the inside.

It is like Valkorion winning all over again.

The thought of the evil presence that had haunted her for so long nearly breaks every bit of concentration, and distantly she can feel moisture drip down the side of her face as she fights to maintain the connection. Except it’s different this time. There is no malevolent laughter, no darkness and no light. There is nothing but the void trying to beckon her in. 

Like then, it’s the tether she grasps that keeps her from being unmoored, and she shoves everything else aside so she can continue her trek.

When she reaches the end of the line, his presence is still masked, but she can see the cracks in the normally durasteel walls he has in place. That should concern her, but she’s more distracted by what she sees in the hairline fractures. Where there is usually a blazing presence, brighter than the stars, there’s now a dull light. As if worn down by the nothingness sucking everything else in.

She reaches out, tries to trace it — and for a moment it pulses brighter as if startled. It is so recognizably him she could nearly sob, before she’s flung away again — and this time she knows it’s not her concentration breaking. The brief flash of his fear and pain and hope is like seeing a glimpse of home — before she opens her eyes to the dim light of their quarters. The place that used to be home, before this entire mess had started. She lands in an ungraceful heap on the ground, the clatter of several objects around her echoing as they crash down as well. As she stares at the rocky ground in a daze, she realizes distantly that she had submerged so deep in the Force in her search that she had caused both herself and everything around her to float several inches off the ground.

She dimly hears a noise, like an incessant gnat buzzing around. After a few more moments, it dawns on her that it is in fact her communicator that’s beeping. She grabs it and opens the waiting channel, still blinking away the disorientation.

“Commander.” It’s Lana, her voice weary and weighed down by her own relentless search. “It is done. We have a destination.”

“Where?” Grey tries to project in her voice the sound of a calm, unflappable leader. From the croaky, wavering quality of even the single syllable, she’s fairly certain that’s a failed effort. “Where is he?”

Lana doesn’t answer for a few moments, and it’s unclear whether her hesitation stems from the answer or something else entirely. When she speaks again, it’s with a quiet, almost resigned determination masking a much deeper fear. “They have gone to Nathema.”

Once said aloud, it seems so obvious. Like they should have known that all along, like they shouldn’t have spent months deciphering the fractured clues Theron had left in his wake. Both she and Lana had been to those underground vaults, had but a glimpse of the dark secrets that Vitiate—Valkorion— _whatever_ —had squirreled away during his long tenure as Sith Emperor. They should already be in route, heading the Order of Zildrog off before they had a chance to find the apocalypse waiting for them underneath the Sanitarium’s ruins. Before the rest of those walls Theron is holding in place cracks and he puts himself in more danger than he’s already invited in.

But for a single moment, even all of that fades, until there’s nothing but the memory of that tear in the Force. It bears down, its nothingness closing in from all sides. Even long gone now, flung out into the void that he created, Valkorion still lingers on inside of her. Pressing down on that shatter-point he created so long ago, until the cracks she thought long filled in begin to splinter and spread. In some ways, she’ll never be rid of his stench, never erase the dark mark he had left on her. For a brief, fleeting moment she considers the possibility of running far away and escape the permanent wound he’s left both on her and the Force itself.

But that dimming light at the back of her mind pulls her back from that line of thinking, pulls her back from her dark thoughts as she’s reminded that the void is not currently pressing in around her. It’s closing around  _him_ , slowly suffocating Theron until eventually it, or the den of serpents he’s walked into, snuff out that comforting warmth she misses so dearly. That she would do anything to get back.

Including march into the void itself.

“Then we go to Nathema,” she says to Lana, but her next words are silent. Meant for someone who has no hope of hearing them.  _Please hold on, Theron. I’m coming._


End file.
